A buzzer sounded as the designated launch depth was attained, the rising blue water on the monitor graphic having reached a red horizontal line. The helmsman pressed a few more buttons, then stood back from the console.
"Flooding complete. Platform is stabilized for launch," he said.
"Secure the bridge," Tongju replied, nodding toward a Filipino crewman who stood near the radarscope. A guard standing near the door was waved over and quickly escorted the crewman off the bridge without saying a word. Tongju followed out the rear of the bridge, entering a small elevator, which he rode to the floor of the hangar. A dozen or so engineers were hovering around the huge horizontal rocket, examining an array of computer stations that were wired directly into the launch vehicle. Tongju approached a thick-haired man with round glasses named Ling who headed up the launch operations team. Before Tongju could speak, Ling gushed with a nervous testimony.
"We have verified final tests on the payload with positive results. The launch vehicle is secure and all electromechanical systems have tested nominal."
"Good. The platform is in the designated position and ballasted for launch. Is the rocket ready to be transported to the launch tower?"
Ling nodded enthusiastically. "We have been awaiting word to proceed. We are prepared to initiate launch vehicle transport and erection."
"There is no reason to dawdle. Proceed at once. Notify me when you are ready to evacuate the platform."
"Yes, of course," Ling replied, then hurried over to a group of nearby engineers and spoke at them rapid-fire. Like a band of scared rabbits, the engineers scattered in a fury to their collective posts. Tongju stood back and watched as the massive hangar doors were opened, revealing a railed path across the deck to the standing launch tower at the opposite end of the platform. A series of electrical motors were then started, which reverberated loudly off the hangar's interior walls. Tongju walked behind a console panel and peered over Ling's shoulder as the launch leader's hands danced over the control board. When a row of lights suddenly glowed green, Ling pointed to another engineer, who activated the mobile cradle.
The two-hundred-foot horizontal rocket rocked sluggishly toward the hangar doors, its support cradle creeping forward on a countless mass of wheels that churned like the legs of a centipede. With its base thrusters leading the way, the rocket crept through the doors and into the daylight, its white paint glistening under the morning sun. Tongju strolled alongside the rolling launch vehicle, admiring the potent power of the huge rocket while amazed at its massive girth in the prone position. Several hundred yards away, the Koguryo stood off the platform, a throng of crew and engineers craning from her top deck to catch a glimpse of the big rocket under way.
Crossing the open deck, the mechanical caterpillar ground to a halt as it reached the base of the launch tower. The upper section of the rocket had not completely cleared the hangar and a sliding panel in the hangar roof suddenly crept open to provide clearance. The transporter was locked securely in place to the deck and then the erector mechanicals were engaged, activating hydraulic pumps that pushed gently against the rocket's cradle. With delicate patience, the launch vehicle was slowly tilted upright, its nose sliding through the hangar roof opening, until it stood vertically against the launch tower. A series of support braces clamped the rocket to the platform, while a jumble of fuel, cooling, and venting lines were affixed and checked. Several workmen on the tower plugged in a series of data cables that allowed the engineers on the Koguryo to monitor the dozens of electronic sensors embedded under the rocket's skin. Once the Zenit was affixed upright, the erector transporter support cradle was gently eased away, leaving the rocket braced only by the launch tower. With a hydraulic murmur, the cradle was slowly lowered to its original horizontal position and returned to the hangar, where it would be sheltered out of harm's way during launch.
Ling spoke anxiously by radio to the Launch Control Center on the Koguryo before dashing over to Tongju.
"Some minor anomalies, but, overall, the launch vehicle meets all major prelaunch parameters."
Tongju looked up at the towering rocket with its payload of deadly virus, aimed to rain death on millions of innocent people. The suffering and deaths meant nothing to him, a man purged of emotional empathy decades ago. The power he felt before him was all that mattered, a power greater than he had ever known before, and he relished the moment. Gradually, his eyes played down from the tip of the
rocket to its base, then swept slowly across the breadth of the plat form, before settling on Ling. The engineer stood waiting anxiously for a reply. Tongju let Ling wallow in discomfort a moment longer before breaking the silence in a deep, firm tone. "Very well," he said. "Begin the countdown."
The crew OF the Deep Endeavor had quickly found interdiction support duty to be a monotonous assignment. After two days on station, they had only been requested to board and search one ship, a small freighter from the Philippines carrying a shipment of hardwood timber. The commercial shipping traffic that approached Los Angeles from the southwest had been light and ably handled by the nearby Coast Guard cutter Narwhal. The NUMA crew preferred to be put to work rather than circle aimlessly waiting for action and quietly hoped traffic would pick up in their quadrant.
In the ship's galley, Dirk sat sipping a cup of coffee with Summer while she studied a report on coral mortality in the Great Barrier Reef when a crewman approached and told them that they were wanted on the bridge.
"We've received a call from the Narwhal," Delgado reported. "They're halfway through a container vessel search and asked us to confirm identification on a vessel approaching west of Catalina and then stand by for possible interdiction."
"No advance identification from our eye-in-the-sky?" Dirk asked.
"Your father and Al took off in the Icarus this morning. They're working their way down from the north and will probably make a pass through our quadrant within the next couple of hours."
Summer peered out the bridge window to the north, spotting the Narwhal bobbing alongside a large containership that rode low in the water from its heavy cargo. Farther west, she spotted a red speck approaching on the horizon. The Deep Endeavor's pilot was already steering an intercept course toward it.
"Is that her?" Summer asked, pointing a finger toward the object.
"Yes," Delgado replied. "The Narwhal has already radioed her to halt, so we'll intercept her after she's had a chance to slow. She's reported herself as the Maru Santo out of Osaka."
An hour later, the Deep Endeavor hove to alongside the Maru Santo, a rusty, multipurpose cargo freighter of small size by inter-Pacific standards. Aimes's Sea Marshal team, along with Summer, Dahlgren, and three other NUMA crewmen, climbed into a small launch and motored over to the freighter, tying up to a rust-stained stairwell that was lowered over the side. Having made fast friends with the bomb-sniffing dogs, Summer quickly volunteered to take the leash of one of the retrievers. As Aimes and Dahlgren met with the freighter's captain to review the manifest, the remaining contingent began a bow-to-stern search of the ship. With the dogs leading the way, the search crew wedged through the ship's holds, checking the container seals and examining several loose crated shipments of running shoes and apparel manufactured in Taiwan. A gritty Malaysian crew looked on with bored amusement as the yellow Labs sniffed their way through the dimly lit crew's quarters.
Dirk stood on the bridge of the Deep Endeavor, studying the Japanese cargo ship. A pair of the freighter's crew stood on the deck looking back at the NUMA vessel. Dirk tossed a friendly wave as the two
men leaned against a railing in disheveled clothes, smoking cigarettes and cracking jokes in an obviously relaxed manner.
"There is no threat from this ship," he turned and said with certainty to Captain Burch.
"How can you be so sure?"
"The crew is too lax. The men on Kang's ship were no-nonsense professionals, not the ragtag jovial sort on this tub. There would be a slew of paranoid undercover security types runni
ng around as well," he added, recalling the image of Tongju and his men.
"Be worth noting to Aimes when he gets back. If nothing else, it's still a good practice exercise for the boys. And, heck, I got Dahlgren off the bridge for a few minutes at least," the captain smiled.
"We've still got to find them first. There's just too many places to hide at sea," Dirk muttered.
As the search team appeared above decks for a moment, Captain Burch picked up a pair of binoculars and scanned the horizon. He noted a pair of dots far to the southwest, then scanned to the north, taking in the Narwhal as she started to pull away from the container-ship. Burch started to drop the binoculars when a sudden glint caught his eye. Raising the glasses and adjusting the focus, he smiled broadly, then spoke to Dirk.
"I guess there will be a few less places to hide on the sea now that our illustrious leaders of the deep are checking things out from the balcony."
Two thousand feet above the calmly rolling swells of the Pacific, the silver Icarus floated gracefully across the sky at thirty-five miles per hour. While the elder Pitt handled the blimp's flight controls, Giordino adjusted a row of dials at the base of a flat-panel color monitor. A WE SCAM long-distance camera mounted to the side of the gondola, a supplement to the LASH imaging system, fed into the
monitor, providing a zoom image of objects located hundreds of yards away. Pitt glanced from the flight controls to the monitor, which displayed a close-up picture of the stern of a small boat where two bikini-clad women were stretched out sunbathing.
"I hope your girlfriend doesn't catch wind of your voyeuristic tendencies," Pitt laughed.
"Just testing the resolution," Giordino replied in a serious tone while prankishly zooming the image in and out on one of the women's behinds.
"Ansel Adams you're not. Let's see what that setup will read with a real target," Pitt said, turning the airship west toward an outbound vessel a few miles away. Dropping down a few hundred feet, Pitt nosed the Icarus to starboard and increased the throttle, gradually gaining ground on the departing ship. While still nearly a half mile away, Giordino zoomed the camera lens onto the stern of the black-hulled freighter, easily reading the name: "Jasmine Star... Madras." He raised the camera along the ship's deck, noting a stacked array of containers, before settling on the bridge mast, where the monitor revealed a flag of India snapping crisply in the breeze. "Works like a champ," Al said proudly.
Pitt looked at the LASH screen on the laptop, which showed an empty swath of sea in advance of the Indian freighter. "Nothing coming up on the main shipping channel for the time being. Let's keep going south, where it looks like there's a little more activity," he said, noting several images on the left edge of the screen.
Maneuvering the blimp south, they soon passed over the Narwhal and the containership she just searched, then they cruised over a portion of Catalina Island. Passing back over the water, Giordino pointed out the windshield toward a turquoise ship in the distance.
"There's the Deep Endeavor. Looks like she has gotten into the act as well," he said, noting the red freighter idling nearby.
Pitt guided the blimp toward the NUMA ship, calling it up on the radio as they approached.
"Icarus to Deep Endeavor. How's the fishing down there?"
"Nary a nibble," Burch's voice replied. "How are you gentlemen enjoying your sightseeing flight?"
"Delightful, except for Al's incessant crunching at the caviar table, which is interrupting my enjoyment of the in-flight movie. We'll see if we can't rustle you up some more business."
"Roger, we'd be much obliged."
Giordino adjusted the blimp's LASH system, examining it for targets.
"Looks like we've got an inbound vessel in the main shipping channel about twenty-two miles to the northwest and what looks like a couple of stationary targets eighteen miles to the west of us," he said, pointing to some gray-and-white patches on the monitor that contrasted with the blue ocean background.
Pitt looked at the laptop, then glanced at his watch. "We ought to be able to catch the northwest ship on the fly. Let's go see what's parked out here first," he replied, aiming the blimp to the west and toward the two large smudges on the screen that were oddly sitting still.
Firing A rocket off the Sea Launch platform is traditionally preceded by a seventy-two-hour launch countdown. During the three-day preparation, dozens of tests are performed to ensure that all support systems are operational and all mechanical and computer systems aboard the rocket are ready to withstand the violent rigors of launch. At T-15 hours before launch, the engineers and all but a handful of crewmen are evacuated from the platform as the final stages of the countdown progresses. The assembly and command ship is then moved to a safe operating area four miles up range of the platform.
At T-5 hours, the last of the crewmen are evacuated from the platform aboard a helicopter and the remaining countdown procedures are handled remotely from the support ship. With less than three hours to go, the hazardous operation of fueling the launch vehicle is performed automatically, the kerosene and oxygen combustibles remotely pumped into the rocket from the large storage tanks housed on the platform. Once fueled, the decision is then left to the launch engineers aboard the support ship to proceed with the launch and fire the rocket when ready.
Absent the luxury of time, Ling's team of launch engineers consolidated the Sea Launch firing procedures into a bare-minimum schedule. Redundant and nonessential tests were scrapped, built-in launch holds were eliminated, and the fueling time reduced on account of the shortened flight plan. By their accord, they could launch the Zenit in just eight hours from the time the Odyssey was ballasted and stabilized.
Tongju stood on the platform near the base of the launch tower and gazed at a large digital clock mounted on the roofline of the hangar. The red illuminated numbers read 03:32:17, with the digits clicking backward a second at a time. Three hours and thirty-two minutes until liftoff. Barring a major technical difficulty, there would be no halting the launch now. In Tongju's eyes, it would soon come down to the simple task of fueling the rocket and lighting it off.
But before the button could be pushed, the Koguryo had to obtain total control of the launch process. Ling and his engineers first established a radio link to the automated launch control system, which was tested and verified through the Koguryo's launch control center. Then there was the transfer of the Odyssey's own command system. A wireless marine positioning system allowed the launch platform to be remotely controlled after all personnel were evacuated for launch. like a radio-controlled toy, the platform could be raised, lowered, or moved by the touch of a keypad aboard the Koguryo. Once the controls had been passed to the support ship, Ling approached Tongju on the deck.
"My work here is complete. Full system control now lies on the Koguryo. My team and I must return to the support ship to resume launch countdown activities."
Tongju glanced again at the countdown clock. "My compliments.
You are ahead of schedule. I will call for the Koguryo's tender and you may take your men off the platform at once."
"You will not be joining us now?" Ling asked.
"I must secure the prisoners first, then my assault team will follow along. It is my desire to be the last man off the platform before launch," Tongju said. "That is, except for the men who will not be coming off at all," he added with a sinister smile.
"There's not supposed to be an oil platform located here."
Giordino's eyes shifted from the large square object on the water ahead of them to an oversized navigational chart he'd folded on his lap. "No man-made hazards are indicated in this region at all. I don't think the Sierra Club is going to take kindly to some stealth drilling this close to the coast."
"They might be even more perturbed when you tell them the oil platform has a rocket aboard," Pitt replied.
Giordino squinted out the airship's windshield toward the approaching platform. "I'll be. Give that man with the eagle eye a cookie."
&nbs
p; Pitt turned the blimp as they approached, making a wide loop around the platform and adjacent support ship, careful to avoid its airspace.
"Sea Launch?" Giordino asked.
"Must be. I didn't think they'd move it around with the rocket standing upright, though."
"I think they're parked," Giordino replied, noting there was no wake from the nearby support ship. "You don't suppose they would be launching from here?"
"No way. They are supposed to fire those things off from the equator. They would at least be up north off the Vandenberg range if they were going to try a live launch around here. Probably some sort of test, but let's find out."
Pitt punched a switch on a marine band radio and hailed the platform through his headset.
"Airship Icarus to Sea Launch platform. Over."
An empty pause ensued and then Pitt repeated the call. After another lengthy lull, an accented voice finally replied.
"This is Sea Launch platform Odyssey. Over."
"Odyssey, what is the nature of your position? Do you require assistance? Over."
Another long pause. "Negative."
"I repeat, what is the nature of your position?"
A pause again. "Who is requesting inquiry?"
"Friendly sorts, aren't they?" Giordino said to Pitt.
Pitt shook his head slightly and spoke again into the radio. "This is airship Icarus, supporting Coast Guard border security. Please identify current state. Over."